Obfuscation is in Order

Since childhood, I have been enraptured by the power of words. As a three year-old, my father used to read me an ABC primer before bed every night. The book was chock full of hairy primates who formed their bodies into the individual letters of the alphabet. As a child, I was infinitely amused by them and learned to love language through this book. Yet even then, I can remember being drawn to the structure of specific words given to represent each letter of the alphabet. X . . . Y . . . Z. Even though the end of the book spelled bedtime, this was always my favorite part. Xylophone. A fairly lengthy word, I could picture the elongated instrument being banged on brutishly by the alphabet monkeys. In a flash, the zebra from two pages down came crashing through the ensemble, the butted “Z” on his forehead smashing the lengthy xylophone into so many letters and pieces.

That was nearly twenty years ago, yet I frequently cite that book as my first distinct contact with the world of literature. As an undergraduate student immersed in a world of letters and words, tropes and metaphors, fictions and non-fictions, squandering but a few minutes to dwell on the imagistic qualities of a single word often seems unthinkable. But I still find myself enamored by individual manifestations of language when beholding a certain word.
Nonplussed: a fowl plucked of all feathers, stark and naked to the world.
Lugubrious: lug nuts and briars smeared like goobers all over the face.
Vexation: somebody’s got the hex on me and it’s become my vocation?
Similar examples have been teeming throughout my mind ever since I began to maintain a grasp of the English language, and I cherish the moments I was able to spend fixated on words and words alone. Many of the associations made between words are based on similarities in sound or spelling, prevalent in hex as a part of vexation. In other instances, an aleatory pattern found in the structure of the word causes an imagistic reaction to what I know to be the prescribed meaning, such as in lugubrious.

Having come this far in my desperate affair with the English language, I find the perpetual existence of new and obscure words prevalent within it a great joy. Indeed, when writing, I have often set out to formulate and entire sentence or paragraph solely for the sake of incorporating a single word. As English is to be eternally heralded for having the largest number of words amongst all world languages, I presume my fate to fornicate with it shall never end.

But what is the use of having a licentious love story if you can’t tell anyone? I find myself asking this question regularly as of late; for what is the purpose in intimately understanding the English language and its over two million words if one cannot feel free to utilize them at will? For instance, “I feel impelled with a virtuous desire to reinstate our former benevolent kinship in spite of my reprehensible actions,” is easy replaceable with, “Sorry dude!” in any given conversation amongst members of my generation. On an individual level, why does the word loquacious even exist when absolutely no one seems to fancy its use over the pitifully colloquial talkative? It’s not as if loquacious is a particularly difficult to pronounce word—it simply does not garner reputable usage in the English speaking world.

I am of the opinion that language is a progressive mode of mental apprehension. Through the passing of years and acquisition of education, one’s vocabulary level rises accordingly. However, in second grade, there is no conceivable use for the word superfluous. Yet as humans striving towards a linguistically and intellectually independent existence, through the years we work to accommodate the substance of our very own existence through the words we use. In high school, decentralization and onomatopoeia become common knowledge vocabulary; moving into so-called college level literariness, words such as invidious, epistemology, and rhizomatic all enter the playing field.
I feel like that for many members of my generation, somewhere along the line the desire and denoted necessity for a high vocabulary drops below disparaging levels. As if only a certain few words are required to express the infinite realm of human emotion or philosophical inquiry? Not one fleeting moment of concern is given to the necessity for linguistic independence and intellectual prowess by the majority of my generation.

Above all, I believe it is my generation’s utter refusal to embrace the intrinsic value of language that has led them down a steep spiral towards a chronically fecund existence. Inherent within is a painstakingly neglected corpus of vocabulary that is repeatedly trampled on and shored up as worthless, archaic language. In its stead, a lifeless and redundant wave of clichés and modernized aphorisms relegates the increasingly primitive existence of my generation. And they say that language is the only thing that separates animals from humans . . .